


The Darkest Hour (Comes Before The Dawn)

by Saucery



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Commentary, Dark Character, Episode Related, M/M, Meta, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Religions, Religious Themes & References, Romance, Season Finale, Slash, Spoilers, Star-crossed, Their Love Is So, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-26
Updated: 2011-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:21:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My thoughts on the season finale of <i>Supernatural</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkest Hour (Comes Before The Dawn)

Come to the Dark Side. We have... angels?

Okay, yes, I was so traumatized and/or turned-on by Castiel's development in the season finale of _Supernatural_ that I might have, like, broken something. I actually had to go to _bed_ and, uh, _wheeze_ with my eyes tightly closed, re-playing instance after instance of Castiel going Red Kryptonite...

  


...Yes, still re-playing.

But you know what? Aside from the heart-sinking, heart- _breaking_ realization that Cas was finally going to flip? Which, let's be honest, started as late as around 30 minutes into the very final episode, kudos to the director, since Cas was still showing signs of possessing an actual conscience until then - and even though part of me was cheering and/or sobbing with relief when Castiel handed over the blood to Crowley and ran off (at-least-he-won't-be-part-of-this-at-least-at- _least_ ), a bigger part of me was just going... oh, crap. Because Castiel? Does _not_ run away from a fight. He smites, he bleeds, he _dies_ \- but he _does not run_. He's the guy that doesn't blink while staring Putin in the eyes - sorry, President Bush - and so I knew, I _knew_ , at that very moment, what Cas had actually done and who would actually be drinking that half-demon, half-virgin blood.

 _Anyway_. Yeah. _Aside_ from the heartbreak that probably had Castiel fangirls across the world exploding like so many Raphaels ( _I_ exploded, and these are only my fleshy, bloody, eviscerated body-parts talking), there's a mingled sense of - betrayal? (Kripke _went_ there?) - grief (oh, _Dean_! 'Don't let me lose you, _too_!') - arousal (Castiel's _voice_ , going all Dark Knight in that moment of 'bow down before me' - YES, MASTER!) - and abject terror (also arousal, in another sense of the word, at the thought that _Castiel is God_ and can therefore just freaking _take what he wants_ ).

OH GOD I DON'T KNOW, but there's a - there's a -

There's a sense of inevitability, because of _course_ this is one of the major tropes _Supernatural_ employs - repeatedly, interoperably - in the development of its principal characters. The trope of, you know, going Dark Side. Red Kryptonite. Lord Voldemort. Whatever. That's how moral and psychological development _works_ , in this show - Dean's been through it, Sam's been through it (so many times I've lost _count_ , and that's not even counting the most recent examples of blood-drinking and rampant psychopathy), and okay, maybe _becoming the new God_ is, like, a whole new level of bad(ass)ness, but given the fact that Castiel's an angel, how _else_ could he go Dark? Believably? He couldn't do the Lucifer thing - not _quite_ \- because he's driven as much by love of others (or _was_ , before the nuclear isotopes of Purgatory _ate his brain_ ) as anything else, and Lucifer didn't give a damn about anything other than his own shiny ass (very shiny, admittedly). So Castiel couldn't _fall_ , not that way - the only way for him to fall was, ironically, for him to _rise_ \- because you fall harder from greater heights, right? Right. Okay. So now, Castiel is _God_ \- or thinks he is - and until he soulsplodes or whatever, he _is_ the captain of this motherfucking boat. (For definitions of 'boat' that include 'world', or maybe 'known universe'.)

Maybe - _maybe_ \- Castiel will survive this, in a manner that at all resembles the Castiel we've come to know and love. Given (as I've said) the use and NOW DEFINITE OVERUSE, OKAY of the Dark Side trope, it seems to me like Cas _will_ make a comeback, newly humbled and ashamed, to press penitent, reverent kisses upon Dean's mouth (okay, so maybe not _that_ , but a fangirl can dream, right?).

Remember what I'd said in [this (hopelessly naive, naively hopeful) post](http://saucery.livejournal.com/13250.html)? I actually _still_ kind of believe in that - that this is God's - the _real_ God's - plan for Castiel, that he should understand the price of power and its unbearable, burning _weight_. I want to believe that this is Castiel's next lesson - nay, not merely a 'next lesson', but THE FINAL EXAM. Whether he passes or fails is - all right, up to him - but possibly up to all the souls he's swallowed, as well, to _their_ collective sentience, and what they want him to do. Because, seriously? This is the absolute exponential extreme of Dissociative Identity Disorder - and if you thought _Sam_ had multiple selves to wrangle around with and integrate? - think of how many selves _Cas_ has to integrate, now. I'm willing to bet good money that one of the early episodes of the next season will incorporate the theme of Castiel having to _cope_ with all the souls inside of him - and I don't just mean the firepower, but the _psychological burden_ of having all those _people_ in there, many of them driven feral by millennia in Purgatory (which was probably like some insane version of Lord of the Flies, multiplied by a zillion) and many of them somehow - incredibly - still retaining a shred of decency and tenderness (like Bobby's ex-girlfriend). Castiel's going to go _nuts_ , and in his state of exalted power, he's likely to do some serious damage to the world - okay, some good things, too, but generally the _freaky_ side of good - before Dean figures out a way to stop him. (Probably with Crowley's help, to add salt to Castiel's wounds - that Dean condemned _Castiel_ when he sought out Crowley, but will undoubtedly do the same, himself.)

It'll have to be Dean that stops Castiel. Of _course_ it will. It'll have to be the guy who, for the better part of this season _and_ the last, was Castiel's conscience. His one true love. UNTIL HE BETRAYED CASTIEL BY FAILING TO BELIEVE IN HIM - because, for an angel, faith _is_ love, you know? And while Dean _did_ believe in Castiel long past what was reasonable, he didn't continue to believe in him to the very _end_ \- which was how Castiel believed in Dean, when he betrayed _Heaven_ for Dean and, like, stopped the freaking _Apocalypse_.

Dean loves (and believes) in Cas as much as a human is capable of loving and believing - but for an angel, love and belief _have no end_ (even _Lucifer_ was still nursing a bizarrely incestuous crush on Big Daddy, _after falling_ ). Which is why Dean's eventual failing of Castiel's stupid do-you-love-me-do-you-love-me- _now_? tests (inevitable, really, given the fact that Castiel's a needy child whose father abandoned him and now sees any instance of dissent as latent/incoming abandonment) hurt him so very, very much. Because he's an idiotic child. Who needs love. And who isn't getting it - _didn't_ get it - at least, not in the way he wanted - in the way he _needed_.

It's not Dean's fault; I mean, no one _has_ to return anyone's unrequited love. And Dean's love for Castiel, while just about as immense as a human's can be, isn't _that_ kind of love. (At least, he's pretending it isn't!) And Castiel's been painfully, obviously _in love_ with Dean since, like, I can't even remember _when_ \- a couple of episodes after they first met? He has repeatedly, almost constantly, been doing things out of his blind infatuation with Dean - while Dean has been studiously, determinedly pretending not to notice that infatuation, and failing to deal with it, in a way that could be cowardly or just plain kind, but _also_ in a way that has made Castiel believe that it's impossible for Dean to love him _back_ , so really, he's already been abandoned and has to fend for himself (even though he still loves Dean, and thus will still be also be fending for _him_ ).

To Castiel, all of Dean's last-minute declarations of being _family_ , of not wanting to lose Cas, _too_ , must seem bitterly belated and ironic, to say the least. Of course, Cas is _nuts_ , so he can't see that Dean's familial love for him is _enough_ \- it's _not_ fucking enough, not for _Cas_ , whose idea of familial love is brothers stabbing each other and fathers abandoning their sons. Cas has long marveled at the Winchesters and their model of familial love (heh, this is how fucked up Cas is, that he thinks the _Winchesters_ are a model of a functional family). And maybe, just maybe, he's wanted desperately to be _part_ of that family - was even welcomed into it by Dean, if in a manner that was too little, too late. But in the end, even if he'd been welcomed into it _earlier_ , in a more obvious, more demonstrative way, it would've done nothing but delay Castiel's unavoidable Red Kryptonite moment - because family is _not_ enough for Castiel, who's suffered from parental neglect LIEK WHOA, and who needs attention like a two-year-old with an avoidance/attachment complex. Dean didn't give him that attention. Dean didn't give him that _love_ \- didn't grip Castiel tight and raise him from the perdition of trembling, stupid _loneliness_. Because Dean, see, doesn't _know_ how to love like that - the only love he can understand is family. He couldn't love Lisa or stay with her in a way that was suitably 'romantic' - he doesn't _get_ romance, only honest lust, and that, too, only with those people who strictly don't stick around long enough to be family.

 _That's_ the central irony and rust-red _hurt_ at the center of the Dean/Castiel dynamic - that familial love is the only kind of love Dean can understand, and it's also the only kind of love Castiel _can't_. It's the typical case of requited love being misunderstood - like that time in _Swan Lake_ or _The Little Mermaid_ , YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT (OH MY GOD IS CASTIEL THE _MERMAID_? ASLKJLDFKL) - because both lovers are at psychological cross-purposes, wired in ways that are mutually exclusive when it comes to patterns of expressing and receiving love. In a more mundane pair, this would be a mismatch of smaller proportions - oh, I don't know, remembering anniversaries once a year versus doing the laundry everyday - but given how epic and _insane_ Dean's and Castiel's lives are, it stands to reason that their differences cause major freaking _world-breakage_.

  
  


Think about it. What do all tyrants (the well-intentioned ones, at least) have in common?

A need to be loved, that's what - stemming from childhood neglect and/or abuse, and the failure of an early, supportive family structure to provide unconditional emotional nourishment. Unconditional _love_. So what the tyrants do is to _take_ that love, or a passable facsimile of it, in the form of power - a power that _forces_ the adoration of others, their adulation, their flawless, torn, throbbing surrender. It's on par with rape, in a way, in how horrifying it is and how absolutely _removed_ it is from actual love - but the tyrants have never been loved like that, anyway, right? What have they got to lose?

I'm sad to say it, but Castiel has arrived at such a state. "So you will bow down and _profess your love unto me_ , your Lord." How _desperate_ must Castiel be, to become _God_ , just so that everyone - so that _Dean_ \- would love him? Yes, yes, it's the twisted souls inside of him that are egging him on - but they're only able to do that because _the seed is already there_ , just like Crowley was able to tempt Castiel because Castiel already had that hubris - that _weakness_ \- within him. Castiel's slow-burning thirst for love has now finally consumed him, and in the white-hot madness of it he can no longer see who he was, or who Dean _is_ , or what his love for Dean was like, anymore. Because Dean _didn't love him back_. Not the way he wanted to be loved - unconditionally, transcendentally, completely.

Tyrants become tyrants in part because they were never loved - or _think_ they were never loved. And Castiel? Really _has_ never known unconditional love. Not only has his father been AWOL since, like, forever - but even when he _was_ around, the way he raised his ~~children~~ angels brooked no argument, because if anyone argued, questioned, doubted or rebelled, they got exiled. _Forever_. Like Lucifer. So Castiel became a _good boy_. A super-good boy. Obedient, faithful and devoted - even if only to the shadow of his missing father's memory - but then he met Dean, and realized that, hey, _this_ was unconditional love - what Dean felt for _Sam_ , for Bobby. This was the love that accepted all failures, that took all disappointments and _never turned away_ , never abandoned or punished or lost hope.

Castiel did everything to earn that love - to become one of the people Dean loved 'unconditionally' - but you can't _earn_ that love, of course, _because it's unconditional_. It just has to be given. Without asking anything _back_. Castiel doesn't _get_ that; his entire existence has been a series of interminable, incomprehensible tests. To him, everything he's been doing for Dean - popping in whenever he was called, manipulating the very fabric of time-space to satisfy every one of Dean's whims - has been an effort to _earn Dean's love_. A love that's as unconditional as the one Dean feels for his family - but also _more_ than that, more needy and binding and _sharp_ , because - you got it - Castiel doesn't _understand_ familial love, at some subconscious level - he doesn't feel that it's _enough_. (Remember what he said, at the very end of the finale? "You're not my family, Dean. _I have no family_." Yeah. Which is why Castiel became God, obviously - it's lonely at the top, and he has nothing to lose, anyway. In fact, by _becoming_ God, Castiel might finally experience at least a distant, agonized simulation of what he's always wanted - a never-ending family, because everyone will then be bound to him, and to his will, and to his - love? If one can call it that.)

Dean, meanwhile, has been unknowingly encouraging this rift within Castiel - _by_ calling him for every little thing, by getting him to _do_ stuff all the time, as if he only needs Castiel when Castiel is _useful_ , when he's proving to Dean how useful he _is_. Way to go, Dean, encouraging Cas to believe in unconditional love! Do you think he'll honestly believe you when you tell him you love him the way you do Sam? (Which wouldn't be enough, anyway, since Cas doesn't just love you but is _in love_ with you.) All Dean has ever done, post-Apocalypse, is treat Castiel like his very own celestial manservant - a fact brought into sharp relief by Balthazar's own sarcasm when Sam and Dean call upon him, like, _twice_ ('Do I _look_ like a manservant to you?'). Imagine this - an ARCHANGEL - which is what Castiel is (or _was_ , before he became _God_ , Jesus) - becoming a mere human being's _manservant_. That's how everyone thinks Dean's been treating Cas - but Dean doesn't realize it, because, to him, love means giving endlessly, the way he's always given to his family. What he _doesn't_ understand is that Castiel hasn't _had_ that kind of family; to him, being asked over only to do things isn't any different to having the sort of price-tag placed around his heart that his father (God 1.0) had placed around it. Love for a _price_ ; affection for _work_. You have to earn your _keep_ , boy. (Which is what [this scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCc2tKvbahY) is about, _literally_ , when Dean's talking about how he can't trust Castiel anymore, and Castiel says he can - that Dean _should_ trust him. Why? "I've earned it." How? "I've done everything you've ever asked of me." Oh, Castiel.)

So, obviously, Castiel starts drifting away from Dean - starts to think Dean doesn't really love him, not like _that_ , not as desperately and passionately as Castiel loves _him_. He doesn't have the _right_ to ask anything of Dean - to draw him out of his beautiful, apparently picture-perfect life with _Lisa_ , oh, fuck, the woman Dean touches like he'd never touch _Cas_ \- so he won't ask Dean for help or advice, not even when Raphael's face-slamming him into the soil of Heaven or when Crowley's slithering around offering dubious deals. He won't _intrude_ upon Dean - won't _ask_ for anything - because now that Dean's done using him for the Apocalypse, what does Dean want him for, anyway? Certainly not for spending 'quality time' (okay, where would they find the time for that, but _still_ ), or for loving him _back_ , or for giving him those soul-deep embraces that he reserves for Sam or even the more carnal embraces he reserves for Lisa. Nothing. Dean wants him for nothing. Nothing _sweet_ , nothing tender, nothing like those times when Dean took him out for burgers or hookers or looked into his eyes and touched him and taught him about free will. Now, Dean only calls him for _work_ , like a freaking bellboy, to deliver things or perform tasks or jump through proverbial hoops lined with fire. And yet, when the time comes for Dean to _really_ believe in Cas (or so Cas thinks), Dean fails. Spectacularly. Even when asked, point-blank, to believe in Castiel - he doesn't.

  


By the time Dean comes around to telling Cas how he _feels_ , it's too late - too late for Cas to _believe_ it, no matter how much he wants to - because his childhood has taught him to _doubt_ the possibility of unconditional love, especially the familial sort, that Dean professes (beautifully, grudgingly, _unconvincingly_ ) to feel.

 _This_ is what Castiel had meant when he'd asked Dean, "Where were you?" And Dean had replied, "Right here - where were _you_?" They _both_ love each other, but fail to understand where the other person's coming from; Castiel fails to understand that Dean loves him like family and that it is _enough_ , that Dean really _would_ be there for him as much as he's been there for Dean, given half the chance. Dean, too, fails to understand that for Castiel, being loved like family _isn't_ enough, because Castiel's own family is so monumentally fucked-up that Cas has nothing but the most rudimentary/deformed understanding of filial loyalty (as in, you can still _stab your brothers in the chest_ if they rebel against good old Dad).

So, yeah. Is this a romantic tragedy or is this a romantic tragedy?

But I still believe that Castiel will turn back to the sweet, innocent Castiel we first got to know - even if he doesn't live long _beyond_ that recovery, although I certainly hope he does.

The reason Castiel will return to his original form - well, a more enlightened, mature version of it - is because that's how character growth _works_ in this show, and that's the only way for this star-crossed romance to be resolved. And Kripke _knows_ that it's a romance; he and Edlund have done a fantastic job of letting us know that that's exactly what it is, at least in terms of the number of standard romantic tropes that have been employed, assiduously and obsessively, in the portrayal of Dean and Cas and their 'more profound bond'.

Sure, it didn't turn out to be the kind of profound bond that _Castiel_ might have wanted it to be, but all I can hope for, at this point, is that as God, Castiel doesn't try to _make_ Dean love him. Not like _that_. On the one hand, pretty much 90% of my Dean/Castiel stories and works-in-progress are now rendered invalid by the fact that Castiel is even _capable_ of doing that (the boundaries of what is 'in-character' for Castiel have drastically shifted!), but on the other hand, I can finally write the sort of dark, depraved Dean/Castiel that still somehow culminates in mutual salvation. Something tells me that this ship is going to get a lot darker - and kinkier - before it remembers that it's Clark Kent, after all.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and curl up on a sofa. With a bucket of ice-cream. And some Kleenex.


End file.
